Thursday, September 22, 2011

The bigger story behind the food-stamp-hating videos from Mr. EBT and Chapter

Obama Foodorama this week links to two rap videos showing Black people abusing their EBT cards from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The videos exploit every possible racist stereotype for a laugh. Some journalists are accepting them as straightforward satire, by artists who are themselves African American, but self-directed satire is not the whole story.

The conservative media is giving lots of attention. The Drudge Report on Monday linked to the first video, by Mr. EBT, showing the singer buying junk food with an EBT card belonging to somebody else. Fox News covers the same story.

The second video is far worse. In it, the singer Latoya "Chapter" Hicks adopts the fanciful character of Keywanda, a foul-mouthed, sexaholic, beer-swigging, chain-smoking Black mother of 10 children. She sings that "all you gotta do is f---" and 9 months later you get lots of government benefits.

Chapter's website, which hosts the video, and "Creative Indie Artists," which produced her song and video, are both projects of Christopher A. Jackson, a White man from California whose other job is as an executive for KROQUE, a military apparel contractor. The Fact Evangelist found the link to the apparel contractor raised questions about the origin of this music project.

Digging a little further, I found an old MySpace page for Christopher Jackson.

On the same MySpace page, there is a 2-year-old comment from Chapter, the singer in the video, introducing herself:

I wrote Jackson, seeking further information about the collaboration with Chapter. He responded today:

Chapter and I wrote the lyrics and Chapter produced and arranged the song. She is releasing another video this Saturday 9/24 and will continue to release a new video each month.

When I asked if this was hard-hitting anti-welfare social commentary, Jackson described the video as "a hard-hitting anti welfare-abuse-program pro social lesson."

An Ohio blog discusses whether the Chapter video is racist. This whole episode reminds me of the tiff in May, when Newt Gingrich called Obama the "food stamp president" and then successfully parried accusations that he was tooting a racist dog whistle. The episode also brought to mind something very strange that I had noticed in the readership logs for this blog. One of the highest-traffic posts in my archives is an old post about race and food stamps. It turns out that hundreds of people on the internet are Googling the topic "race and food stamps." Try it yourself and you can find truly depraved and racist discussion lists.

I hope Obama Foodorama and others who link to these videos will explore them a little further than they have so far. Because these videos purport to be satire, I know I run the risk of seeming humorless. But I'm not laughing yet.

There is a sweet irony here. The guy behind the videos runs a business selling military apparel to the military. Ergo, he is just as reliant on exploiting government handouts as the characters he creates.

Mr Jackson is no longer employed or affiliated with KRoque. KRoque and Mr Jackson's partnerships has been dissolved prior to the video release date.

Kroque and its previous partners have no affiliation with the video in question or Mr Jackson and his wife, LaToya Hicks.

Mr. Jackson's current and previous address concerns were not an address used by KRoque and its partners. KRoque's operating agreements and addresses were complete and full as noted. There was no knowledge as to Mr Jackson's additional address need or use.

KRoque and it's former partners do not condone, promote nor have funded the views expressed in Ms. Hick's videos nor do we support any attempts at possible political statements made by Ms. Hicks and Mr Jackson in their videos.

WHY NOT COUNTERACT THE MESSAGE WITH FACTS BY POINTING OUT THE REAL NUMBERS BASED ON RACE ABOUT WHO ACTUALLY RECEIVES PUBLIC ASSISTANCE? THE FACTS WILL SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES, SHOWING THAT PEOPLE OF ALL RACES ARE AFFECTED BY EXTREME INCOME INEQUALITY.